What do you think?
White Space #3
The Folded Sky
Dr. Sunyata Song must travel across the Milky Way to learn to communicate with the greatest discovery of her century: an artificial intelligence the size of a stellar system, in Hugo Award-winning author Bear's next science fiction epic.
Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace.
Sunya Song's job is to stop that from happening.
She's an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files. But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her - and her family - halfway across the galaxy to save the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called the Baomind.
As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star's time has nearly ended.
The remote research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk.
Tens of thousands of light-years from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.
Information doesn't want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace.
Sunya Song's job is to stop that from happening.
She's an archinformist: a specialist historian whose job usually involves sitting at a console at her university job near the Galactic Core, sorting ancient documents and restoring corrupted files. But now, the research opportunity of a lifetime has sent her - and her family - halfway across the galaxy to save the archaeological find of the century: an ancient alien artificial intelligence called the Baomind.
As vast as a stellar system, the Baomind orbits a dying red giant, and the star's time has nearly ended.
The remote research station and its small fleet of ships come under attack by fanatic Freeport pirates who believe that artificial intelligence is an abomination that must be destroyed, putting the lives of Sunya and her family at risk.
Tens of thousands of light-years from home, isolated from all help, Sunya is the only one who can save them all.
496 pages, Paperback
First published June 17, 2025
About the author
Elizabeth Bear
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 120 reviews
October 8, 2025
4.0 Stars
This was an enjoyable space opera with some interesting science fiction ideas and technology explored. This is technically part of a companion series but you are free to jump in here as this book does not tie directly into the previous installments.
This was an enjoyable space opera with some interesting science fiction ideas and technology explored. This is technically part of a companion series but you are free to jump in here as this book does not tie directly into the previous installments.
March 16, 2025
I received a free copy from Saga Press via Netgalley in exchange for a fair review. Publish date June 17th.
I was intrigued by this book's premise of space historians and first contact. In The Folded Sky, archinformist Sunyata Song has been chosen for a mission to study an ancient alien AI orbiting a dying star. But when Sunya arrives, she discovers that not only did her academic rival beat her there, but the station is under threat by pirates, not to mention a mysterious attempted murder...
Almost from the first chapter, I was struck by the rich worldbuilding of The Folded Sky. Ships and habitats are run by complex AIs who are major characters in their own right. A docked clade is a person who's one mind sharing many bodies, and apparently they can get divorced. Sunya has several recorded human minds called ayatanas stored in her brain. Humans have a computer called a fox in their heads and they choose to manually adjust the intensity of their emotions through "rightminding," which is intended to make people less ruled by petty impulse and more prosocial. Although this is apparently the third book of a series, I had no trouble at all following any of the worldbuilding elements or introduced characters. (I assume the books are shared world rather than a tightly linked trilogy, I haven't read the first two myself.)
However, as much as I enjoyed the worldbuilding, the plot was glacially slow. The characters spent a lot of time talking and thinking, and remarkably little pagespace on major plot elements, like the murder investigation or Sunya's research. Sunya herself is inclined to second-guess and ruminate over her thoughts. Part of this is, I think, her culture. Due to rightminding, Sunya has been brought up with a heavy emphasis on regulating emotions and correct thought. Unfortunately, Sunya's self-consciousness tends to make the interpersonal dynamics, for a lack of a better word, heavily therapized. There's a heavy focus on analyzing what other characters might be thinking in order to say the most politely correct thing possible. The one partial exception is Sunya's tempestuous relationship with her nemesis and toxic ex, Victorya. (Although heads up that it's not a romantic relationship, as Sunya's happily married.)
What a fantastic premise, but I found the execution rather lacking, particularly the slow pace. If you enjoyed Ada Hoffman or Skrutskie's The Salvation Gambit, you might enjoy this book regardless of its issues.
I was intrigued by this book's premise of space historians and first contact. In The Folded Sky, archinformist Sunyata Song has been chosen for a mission to study an ancient alien AI orbiting a dying star. But when Sunya arrives, she discovers that not only did her academic rival beat her there, but the station is under threat by pirates, not to mention a mysterious attempted murder...
Almost from the first chapter, I was struck by the rich worldbuilding of The Folded Sky. Ships and habitats are run by complex AIs who are major characters in their own right. A docked clade is a person who's one mind sharing many bodies, and apparently they can get divorced. Sunya has several recorded human minds called ayatanas stored in her brain. Humans have a computer called a fox in their heads and they choose to manually adjust the intensity of their emotions through "rightminding," which is intended to make people less ruled by petty impulse and more prosocial. Although this is apparently the third book of a series, I had no trouble at all following any of the worldbuilding elements or introduced characters. (I assume the books are shared world rather than a tightly linked trilogy, I haven't read the first two myself.)
However, as much as I enjoyed the worldbuilding, the plot was glacially slow. The characters spent a lot of time talking and thinking, and remarkably little pagespace on major plot elements, like the murder investigation or Sunya's research. Sunya herself is inclined to second-guess and ruminate over her thoughts. Part of this is, I think, her culture. Due to rightminding, Sunya has been brought up with a heavy emphasis on regulating emotions and correct thought. Unfortunately, Sunya's self-consciousness tends to make the interpersonal dynamics, for a lack of a better word, heavily therapized. There's a heavy focus on analyzing what other characters might be thinking in order to say the most politely correct thing possible. The one partial exception is Sunya's tempestuous relationship with her nemesis and toxic ex, Victorya. (Although heads up that it's not a romantic relationship, as Sunya's happily married.)
What a fantastic premise, but I found the execution rather lacking, particularly the slow pace. If you enjoyed Ada Hoffman or Skrutskie's The Salvation Gambit, you might enjoy this book regardless of its issues.
November 10, 2025
The beginning is a little slow but the last 1/3 definitely makes up for it.
October 7, 2025
Love it! Gosh, she can write. The MC was unpleasant and un-self-aware enough at the beginning that I had doubts, but I shouldn't have--I could hardly put it down.
October 4, 2025
I always WANT to give the books in this series 5 stars but they just never quite get to that level for me. Not ever sure exactly why - maybe the pacing is off for me? Still the cats and dragon are great! And so are the Baomind and other SF ideas
January 24, 2025
The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear is White Space #3, following Ancestral Night and Machine, both of which I have previously read. The series shares world-building, but is not strictly sequential.
The cultural and technological milieu of book 3 is similar to the earlier ones in the series – relics of prior Koregoi civilization, pan-species cooperation among alien beings, brain-implanted foxes and ayatanas, time measured in dias (days) and ans (years), AI shipminds, clade persons, and rightminding. The gobbledygook physics borrows current vocabulary – the sort of thing I expect from fantasy writers working in science fiction, such as benevolent shadow-beings made of dark matter, and extravagant extrapolation of particle entanglement. The descriptions of Dr. Sunyata Song’s work – “archinformation” seems to be straight-forward pattern detection. All of the information from the ancient Baomind arrives serialized as Baosong, and Sunya writes parsers. But the really challenging part of understanding alien language should be context and semantics rather than syntax. Her ayatanas provide that somehow.
“Information doesn’t want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace. It wants to slurp down the drain like soapy water planetside, a slick Coriolis whirl and then – gone. Vamoosed. Kaput. Books crumble, digital media degrade. Even holographic storage crystals grow lossy over time. As the universe expands, every cubic meter holds a little less information than it did the instant before. The sun’s rim dips. The stars rush out. At one stride comes the dark. Entropy requires no maintenance. Order and intelligibility do.”
Characters are a more important factor in this writing than the speculative science. There is a passive-aggressive first-person narrator, Dr. Sunyata Song, who uses her fox to rightmind her emotions and mitigate her personality traits. I find rightminding to be the most interesting and perplexing concept in the White Space books. It already requires a high level of self-awareness to know when rightminding is called for. With rightminding by outside intervention, from a shipmind AI for instance, what is left of free will? I feel the concept could easily go dystopian. But in this third novel, rightminding is used almost exclusively for interception of emotional reactions, so as to allow more considered decisions or action. At any rate, Sunya’s character evolves towards physical action when her children are threatened.
The main concern of the writing in this novel is Sunya’s relationships. Most important is her relationship with her sulky teenaged daughter. Most of the growth is on the part of daughter Luna, while Sunya’s rightminding allows her to not react disastrously to Luna’s provocations. Sunya’s relationship with her ex-lover and academic rival Vickee DeVine takes up way too much space, and doesn’t really go anywhere except as a recurring need for Sunya to rightmind herself. Finally, Sunya’s wife Salvie is a Mary Sue; a tirelessly saccharine alien warrior-wife and mother to their children. There are men in this world, but almost all of them are bad guys or pirates. Even the closer ones are described superficially, with no interior personality. I’m aware that superficial treatment of women was common in golden age SF; it was a failing of the genre in those times. Contemporary reversal is also.
There are multiple waves of female kickass action in space and within the ships and stations, with good attention to gravitation (or lack thereof), radiation, and visual display. I expect that aspect of the novel to be quite popular, but my primary interest is in conceptualization and world-building. This setting and plot further develops Bear’s White Space.
I read an Advance Review Copy of The Folded Sky in an ebook format, which I received from Saga Press through netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review on social media platforms and on my book review blog. This new title is scheduled for release on 17 June 2025.
The cultural and technological milieu of book 3 is similar to the earlier ones in the series – relics of prior Koregoi civilization, pan-species cooperation among alien beings, brain-implanted foxes and ayatanas, time measured in dias (days) and ans (years), AI shipminds, clade persons, and rightminding. The gobbledygook physics borrows current vocabulary – the sort of thing I expect from fantasy writers working in science fiction, such as benevolent shadow-beings made of dark matter, and extravagant extrapolation of particle entanglement. The descriptions of Dr. Sunyata Song’s work – “archinformation” seems to be straight-forward pattern detection. All of the information from the ancient Baomind arrives serialized as Baosong, and Sunya writes parsers. But the really challenging part of understanding alien language should be context and semantics rather than syntax. Her ayatanas provide that somehow.
“Information doesn’t want to be free. Information wants to vanish without a trace. It wants to slurp down the drain like soapy water planetside, a slick Coriolis whirl and then – gone. Vamoosed. Kaput. Books crumble, digital media degrade. Even holographic storage crystals grow lossy over time. As the universe expands, every cubic meter holds a little less information than it did the instant before. The sun’s rim dips. The stars rush out. At one stride comes the dark. Entropy requires no maintenance. Order and intelligibility do.”
Characters are a more important factor in this writing than the speculative science. There is a passive-aggressive first-person narrator, Dr. Sunyata Song, who uses her fox to rightmind her emotions and mitigate her personality traits. I find rightminding to be the most interesting and perplexing concept in the White Space books. It already requires a high level of self-awareness to know when rightminding is called for. With rightminding by outside intervention, from a shipmind AI for instance, what is left of free will? I feel the concept could easily go dystopian. But in this third novel, rightminding is used almost exclusively for interception of emotional reactions, so as to allow more considered decisions or action. At any rate, Sunya’s character evolves towards physical action when her children are threatened.
The main concern of the writing in this novel is Sunya’s relationships. Most important is her relationship with her sulky teenaged daughter. Most of the growth is on the part of daughter Luna, while Sunya’s rightminding allows her to not react disastrously to Luna’s provocations. Sunya’s relationship with her ex-lover and academic rival Vickee DeVine takes up way too much space, and doesn’t really go anywhere except as a recurring need for Sunya to rightmind herself. Finally, Sunya’s wife Salvie is a Mary Sue; a tirelessly saccharine alien warrior-wife and mother to their children. There are men in this world, but almost all of them are bad guys or pirates. Even the closer ones are described superficially, with no interior personality. I’m aware that superficial treatment of women was common in golden age SF; it was a failing of the genre in those times. Contemporary reversal is also.
There are multiple waves of female kickass action in space and within the ships and stations, with good attention to gravitation (or lack thereof), radiation, and visual display. I expect that aspect of the novel to be quite popular, but my primary interest is in conceptualization and world-building. This setting and plot further develops Bear’s White Space.
I read an Advance Review Copy of The Folded Sky in an ebook format, which I received from Saga Press through netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review on social media platforms and on my book review blog. This new title is scheduled for release on 17 June 2025.
March 29, 2025
I was looking forward to this new novel, the third in her "White Space" space-opera series. Elizabeth Bear is one of my favorite SF/F writers, and I liked the previous book in this series, Machine, a lot. I found this one to be a mixed bag: parts are great or near-great, but the last third is a bit of a mess. It does come to a sweet ending. For me this was a 3-star read: good but not great.
The opening is great, with a tedious 6-month voyage across the galaxy with an asshole shipmind pilot and a weird 5-way clone for company. Dr. Sunya Song expected to get most of the preliminary work done on her new job en route. Until she discovers the shipmind only brought half of her files! Among other mean tricks. Um. Why didn’t she bring a backup?
The Freeport pirates, fanatical anti-AI humans, are cartoonishly vicious and nasty. Numerous, crafty and very persistent. The space battles are nicely done. Sunya’s old nemesis, fellow data scientist Vickee DeVine, is mean but fun. She gets darker and nastier as the book progresses.
The Synarche civilization, you may recall if you have read the prior White Space books, is a multi-species affair that has expanded into a good part of our Milky Way. The one-system Baomind aliens are a much older culture. They are now endangered by their unstable star. The Synarche is going to attempt a rescue. Those pirates are the main obstacle. Communicating with the Bao aliens turns out to be tricky. And there are other surprises.
The long description of quantum physics, for a messaging system that wouldn’t work (per our current knowledge) was clunky. I know, we don’t read SF to learn science . . . An intriguing new civilization from the dark-matter universe was more fun, as were the details of the helpful Bao aliens. Baosong!
I (mostly) had fun with the book. Cautiously recommended for Bear fans. Don't start the series here!
I read an eArc courtesy of Goodreads and the publisher. The book is scheduled to be published in mid-June 2025.
The opening is great, with a tedious 6-month voyage across the galaxy with an asshole shipmind pilot and a weird 5-way clone for company. Dr. Sunya Song expected to get most of the preliminary work done on her new job en route. Until she discovers the shipmind only brought half of her files! Among other mean tricks. Um. Why didn’t she bring a backup?
The Freeport pirates, fanatical anti-AI humans, are cartoonishly vicious and nasty. Numerous, crafty and very persistent. The space battles are nicely done. Sunya’s old nemesis, fellow data scientist Vickee DeVine, is mean but fun. She gets darker and nastier as the book progresses.
The Synarche civilization, you may recall if you have read the prior White Space books, is a multi-species affair that has expanded into a good part of our Milky Way. The one-system Baomind aliens are a much older culture. They are now endangered by their unstable star. The Synarche is going to attempt a rescue. Those pirates are the main obstacle. Communicating with the Bao aliens turns out to be tricky. And there are other surprises.
The long description of quantum physics, for a messaging system that wouldn’t work (per our current knowledge) was clunky. I know, we don’t read SF to learn science . . . An intriguing new civilization from the dark-matter universe was more fun, as were the details of the helpful Bao aliens. Baosong!
I (mostly) had fun with the book. Cautiously recommended for Bear fans. Don't start the series here!
I read an eArc courtesy of Goodreads and the publisher. The book is scheduled to be published in mid-June 2025.
June 26, 2025
3.5 stars
September 24, 2025
I loved the previous books in this series but sadly I found this one boring and over complicated 😢
I think the book tries to do too much, but also personally I didn’t care about any of the family drama.
I think the book tries to do too much, but also personally I didn’t care about any of the family drama.
September 13, 2025
What a disappointment. I generally enjoyed the earlier White Space books, and the way that they wove together sci-fi action with worldbuilding musings on psychology and society. But with this one… something went very wrong here.
Sunyata was a supremely unpleasant character to spend time with, to the point that I feel almost any other background character would have been a better choice. In the first two-thirds of the book she’s near-constantly oscillating between caricatured high anxiety and incredible weird pettiness, and rightminding chemistry is mentioned so often that it makes her sound like a tweaking drug addict. In the last third she magically loses all the anxiety and transforms into some kind of space action hero, who is proven to be right about everything and gets to lord it over her onetime rival in the most obnoxious possible way.
I don’t know how to describe the final effect, other than that it feels like someone’s diary of private grievances given fictional shape. I should have listened to myself and abandoned it much earlier.
Sunyata was a supremely unpleasant character to spend time with, to the point that I feel almost any other background character would have been a better choice. In the first two-thirds of the book she’s near-constantly oscillating between caricatured high anxiety and incredible weird pettiness, and rightminding chemistry is mentioned so often that it makes her sound like a tweaking drug addict. In the last third she magically loses all the anxiety and transforms into some kind of space action hero, who is proven to be right about everything and gets to lord it over her onetime rival in the most obnoxious possible way.
I don’t know how to describe the final effect, other than that it feels like someone’s diary of private grievances given fictional shape. I should have listened to myself and abandoned it much earlier.
August 8, 2026
3.5 stars/LGBTQ friendly/occasional swearing including the odd F-word/3rd in a series but could be read without reading the first two as each book features a different main character.
The ending is good and it has some interesting science ideas about dark matter, but the main character was so annoying, especially in the beginning, that I just wanted to slap her upside the head and say "If your rightminding isn't taking away enough of your anxiety then go to a psychiatrist and get some meds!".
The MC is a middle-aged woman, married to an alien woman and they have two human kids (early teens, yay, here come the angst). She's a career woman, a historian, and she was the lucky person chosen to go out to the Baomind (introduced in book 1) and try to talk to it and record it's information before the Baostar goes nova and everything is lost. We meet her as she's traveling on a snarky ship (really snarky, actually more assholeish and passive-aggressive than snarky) stressing herself out about her job. I mean really stressing. This chick has so much stress and anxiety it's a wonder she doesn't have a heart attack. And being forced to read about her anxiety made me anxious. And she's a mature adult with a chip in her head that lets her adjust the levels of her emotions but I guess her anxiety level is way too high for her brain to adjust. They call that rightminding when you adjust your emotions.
Then just when you think you can handle reading about this woman and her fears she finds out that her family, that she left behind on the planet they live on, is coming out to the Baomind also, along with their two cats, and along with her arch-nemesis who is one of those fake people who are good at tricking people for awhile then move on to other people once someone sees through her fakeness. They beat her to the station because the ship they were on was faster. Now we gotta read about her fears for her family, especially her kids. They could die out here. Her Arch-Nemesis will arrive days before she does and will have that much more time to research while she's stuck in this ship with the mean and nasty AI. All kinds of imagined scenarios play out in her head as I'm pounding my own head against the wall. This chick needs some zen meditation or yoga or something. Ay yay yay!
So the Baomind. It's kind of like a Dyson Sphere made up of small panels that can move around. It was installed by mysterious ancient aliens who are now gone and so the Synarche wants to research it and find out what information it holds, what cool advances science secrets it can give them. Hence the reason for sending our MC out. There's a space station near the Baomind/Baostar but it was hastily made by using old ships and gluing them together (I'm just joking, they didn't use glue). Add more anxiety to our MC about the station suddenly coming apart and flinging them into the star to die. Ugh, I seriously thought about quitting the book and getting a refund from Amazon but I'm glad I stuck it out because once she's on the station things get better.
Well, not so much for one character who is almost killed and has to be put in cryo. Accusations fly as to who the would-be attempted murderer is, and even if the right person was targeted. And of course, even though she has no training in this area, the MC stops her Baomind research and instead starts investigating the attempted murder.
Oh, and all along she's been experiencing weird things like the feeling that someone is behind you but when she turns, no one is there. And the music that the Baomind plays to communicate keeps running through her head, mostly in the background but sometimes becomes loud. No, she's not losing her mind, there's actually a cool reason for these things but obviously I'm not gonna tell you.
I rated it 3.5 stars because the MC annoyed me so much in the beginning. For a while I even thought this would turn out to be a 2 star book. But the ending and cool ideas justify upping the stars.
The ending is good and it has some interesting science ideas about dark matter, but the main character was so annoying, especially in the beginning, that I just wanted to slap her upside the head and say "If your rightminding isn't taking away enough of your anxiety then go to a psychiatrist and get some meds!".
The MC is a middle-aged woman, married to an alien woman and they have two human kids (early teens, yay, here come the angst). She's a career woman, a historian, and she was the lucky person chosen to go out to the Baomind (introduced in book 1) and try to talk to it and record it's information before the Baostar goes nova and everything is lost. We meet her as she's traveling on a snarky ship (really snarky, actually more assholeish and passive-aggressive than snarky) stressing herself out about her job. I mean really stressing. This chick has so much stress and anxiety it's a wonder she doesn't have a heart attack. And being forced to read about her anxiety made me anxious. And she's a mature adult with a chip in her head that lets her adjust the levels of her emotions but I guess her anxiety level is way too high for her brain to adjust. They call that rightminding when you adjust your emotions.
Then just when you think you can handle reading about this woman and her fears she finds out that her family, that she left behind on the planet they live on, is coming out to the Baomind also, along with their two cats, and along with her arch-nemesis who is one of those fake people who are good at tricking people for awhile then move on to other people once someone sees through her fakeness. They beat her to the station because the ship they were on was faster. Now we gotta read about her fears for her family, especially her kids. They could die out here. Her Arch-Nemesis will arrive days before she does and will have that much more time to research while she's stuck in this ship with the mean and nasty AI. All kinds of imagined scenarios play out in her head as I'm pounding my own head against the wall. This chick needs some zen meditation or yoga or something. Ay yay yay!
So the Baomind. It's kind of like a Dyson Sphere made up of small panels that can move around. It was installed by mysterious ancient aliens who are now gone and so the Synarche wants to research it and find out what information it holds, what cool advances science secrets it can give them. Hence the reason for sending our MC out. There's a space station near the Baomind/Baostar but it was hastily made by using old ships and gluing them together (I'm just joking, they didn't use glue). Add more anxiety to our MC about the station suddenly coming apart and flinging them into the star to die. Ugh, I seriously thought about quitting the book and getting a refund from Amazon but I'm glad I stuck it out because once she's on the station things get better.
Well, not so much for one character who is almost killed and has to be put in cryo. Accusations fly as to who the would-be attempted murderer is, and even if the right person was targeted. And of course, even though she has no training in this area, the MC stops her Baomind research and instead starts investigating the attempted murder.
Oh, and all along she's been experiencing weird things like the feeling that someone is behind you but when she turns, no one is there. And the music that the Baomind plays to communicate keeps running through her head, mostly in the background but sometimes becomes loud. No, she's not losing her mind, there's actually a cool reason for these things but obviously I'm not gonna tell you.
I rated it 3.5 stars because the MC annoyed me so much in the beginning. For a while I even thought this would turn out to be a 2 star book. But the ending and cool ideas justify upping the stars.
June 18, 2025
The Folded Sky has big, interesting ideas, a colorful cast of characters that are fun to root for or against, and some great action sequences. Unfortunately, and surprisingly for an author as talented as Elizabeth Bear, the pieces struggle to coalesce.
Many of the White Space series strengths continue in this novel. The writing clearly and engagingly communicates big ideas about physics and culture (even if you can’t follow all the physics, like me, you can still clearly follow the implications behind it). Some action sequences towards the back of the novel are truly spectacular in their ability to combine physics, the chaos of conflict, and emotional stakes. And the hopeful world of the White Space series, filled with interesting characters largely trying to make it even better, continues to be a fun place to spend time.
This time though, the story struggles to find narrative momentum or a consistent style. Dr. Sunya Song travels to the edge of the galaxy to study a massive artificial intelligence, known as the Baomind, left behind by an ancient alien race. However, once there, she discovers that the research team is under siege by pirates. Seemingly, the narrative tension will come from her having to do her research while under threat from pirates. Except then, there’s also an attempted murder and it becomes partially about the investigation. The pirates and the research fade. In turn, the mystery often gives way to family drama and fails to really establish a convincing suspect list. Sunya also spends a lot of time lost in her thoughts, another frequent obstacle to narrative momentum. It seems that, admirably, the novel is trying to establish its own unique style by combining different types of stories. Unfortunately, I found that the different elements often worked against each other.
Still, in the novel’s back half I do think it finds a good style and narrative momentum, making for a strong ending (even if I wish it could have explored some of its very interesting ideas more). If you liked the first two White Space novels, you should read this one (even accepting you probably won’t like it as much).
Thank you to NetGalley and Saga Press for the ARC.
Many of the White Space series strengths continue in this novel. The writing clearly and engagingly communicates big ideas about physics and culture (even if you can’t follow all the physics, like me, you can still clearly follow the implications behind it). Some action sequences towards the back of the novel are truly spectacular in their ability to combine physics, the chaos of conflict, and emotional stakes. And the hopeful world of the White Space series, filled with interesting characters largely trying to make it even better, continues to be a fun place to spend time.
This time though, the story struggles to find narrative momentum or a consistent style. Dr. Sunya Song travels to the edge of the galaxy to study a massive artificial intelligence, known as the Baomind, left behind by an ancient alien race. However, once there, she discovers that the research team is under siege by pirates. Seemingly, the narrative tension will come from her having to do her research while under threat from pirates. Except then, there’s also an attempted murder and it becomes partially about the investigation. The pirates and the research fade. In turn, the mystery often gives way to family drama and fails to really establish a convincing suspect list. Sunya also spends a lot of time lost in her thoughts, another frequent obstacle to narrative momentum. It seems that, admirably, the novel is trying to establish its own unique style by combining different types of stories. Unfortunately, I found that the different elements often worked against each other.
Still, in the novel’s back half I do think it finds a good style and narrative momentum, making for a strong ending (even if I wish it could have explored some of its very interesting ideas more). If you liked the first two White Space novels, you should read this one (even accepting you probably won’t like it as much).
Thank you to NetGalley and Saga Press for the ARC.
October 20, 2025
zero stars - garbage
I just can’t.
I liked/loved the first two books.
This one? Garbage.
The main character is a perfect example of someone that I’d never, ever tolerate.
If at dinner, I’d just up and leave.
I’d they were family, I’d go NC to avoid. For all eternity. Until all the information was erased. Until the mean AIs just went away and I could be yawn boring.
Such a disappointment after the first two.
I just can’t.
I liked/loved the first two books.
This one? Garbage.
The main character is a perfect example of someone that I’d never, ever tolerate.
If at dinner, I’d just up and leave.
I’d they were family, I’d go NC to avoid. For all eternity. Until all the information was erased. Until the mean AIs just went away and I could be yawn boring.
Such a disappointment after the first two.
September 7, 2026
Apparently it took three books, but Elizabeth Bear finally got me. I've been in a slightly odd position with White Space until now. I liked Ancestral Night and Machine, but in both cases I was more fascinated by the universe surrounding the story than by the story itself. The enormous variety of species, the strange technologies, the uneasy questions around autonomy and social control—I wanted to keep exploring all of that. I just wasn't always equally interested in what the protagonists were actually doing. The Folded Sky worked much better for me.
Part of that is simply that, by now, Bear doesn't need to introduce quite so much of her universe. I already know enough about the governing structure to be suspicious of its claims to enlightened civilization, enough about this society's relationship with artificial intelligence and personal autonomy to understand why certain choices matter, and enough about White Space to accept its stranger possibilities without needing everything explained from the beginning. That leaves considerably more room for the story itself.
And this one has a sense of exploration that I really enjoyed. There is still plenty of Bear's characteristic interest in psychology, ethics, identity and the responsibilities people have towards minds unlike their own, but this time those ideas felt more naturally caught up in what was happening. I wasn't stopping quite so often to admire an interesting concept while waiting for the plot to catch up with it.
The sheer strangeness helps. Bear is at her best for me when she allows the universe to feel genuinely alien rather than merely populating it with increasingly elaborate variations on familiar things. There are moments in The Folded Sky where that enormous White Space setting finally delivers on the promise I've been seeing in it since the first book: old mysteries, incomprehensible phenomena and the uncomfortable realization that even a civilization as advanced and self-confident as Bear's understands only a fraction of what is out there.
I've always liked that particular kind of science fiction. Give humanity, or humanity's much more sophisticated descendants, a universe that still has the capacity to make them feel very small, and you've probably got me.
Bear still likes people thinking about what they're thinking. Quite a lot. I've more or less accepted that by this point. There are passages where the internal examination goes further than I need it to, and occasionally a conversation circles an idea after I felt the point had already landed. That bothered me considerably in Ancestral Night and somewhat less in Machine. Here, either Bear has found a balance that suits me better or I've finally adjusted to the wavelength of these books. Probably a little of both.
I also found myself more emotionally involved this time. Not dramatically so, but enough that the people no longer felt like guides showing me around a universe I found more interesting than they were. Their relationships with one another, and with the various nonhuman intelligences around them, gave some weight to ideas that in the earlier books occasionally remained just that: interesting ideas.
It's funny, because after two three-star books I could quite easily have stopped. I continued largely because White Space itself kept tempting me back. There was always another corner of Bear's universe I wanted to see. I'm glad I did. The Folded Sky is the first of the three where I wasn't mostly looking past the story towards the universe behind it. This time I was interested in both.
Part of that is simply that, by now, Bear doesn't need to introduce quite so much of her universe. I already know enough about the governing structure to be suspicious of its claims to enlightened civilization, enough about this society's relationship with artificial intelligence and personal autonomy to understand why certain choices matter, and enough about White Space to accept its stranger possibilities without needing everything explained from the beginning. That leaves considerably more room for the story itself.
And this one has a sense of exploration that I really enjoyed. There is still plenty of Bear's characteristic interest in psychology, ethics, identity and the responsibilities people have towards minds unlike their own, but this time those ideas felt more naturally caught up in what was happening. I wasn't stopping quite so often to admire an interesting concept while waiting for the plot to catch up with it.
The sheer strangeness helps. Bear is at her best for me when she allows the universe to feel genuinely alien rather than merely populating it with increasingly elaborate variations on familiar things. There are moments in The Folded Sky where that enormous White Space setting finally delivers on the promise I've been seeing in it since the first book: old mysteries, incomprehensible phenomena and the uncomfortable realization that even a civilization as advanced and self-confident as Bear's understands only a fraction of what is out there.
I've always liked that particular kind of science fiction. Give humanity, or humanity's much more sophisticated descendants, a universe that still has the capacity to make them feel very small, and you've probably got me.
Bear still likes people thinking about what they're thinking. Quite a lot. I've more or less accepted that by this point. There are passages where the internal examination goes further than I need it to, and occasionally a conversation circles an idea after I felt the point had already landed. That bothered me considerably in Ancestral Night and somewhat less in Machine. Here, either Bear has found a balance that suits me better or I've finally adjusted to the wavelength of these books. Probably a little of both.
I also found myself more emotionally involved this time. Not dramatically so, but enough that the people no longer felt like guides showing me around a universe I found more interesting than they were. Their relationships with one another, and with the various nonhuman intelligences around them, gave some weight to ideas that in the earlier books occasionally remained just that: interesting ideas.
It's funny, because after two three-star books I could quite easily have stopped. I continued largely because White Space itself kept tempting me back. There was always another corner of Bear's universe I wanted to see. I'm glad I did. The Folded Sky is the first of the three where I wasn't mostly looking past the story towards the universe behind it. This time I was interested in both.
December 14, 2025
I really enjoyed The Folded Sky. In general, Bear's White Space books have been uniformly interesting and compelling, even as I find them a little puzzling if not mysterious. I will explain.
Bear's characters and ideas are her strongest suit. Uniformly interesting, she gives readers character-driven science fiction that explores what seems like a mix of adventure, action, and heady conceptual thrills. And that's all great! However, I do feel like the first two White Space novels are more comprehensibly linked - this one was more of a struggle to relate to the other two as it is linked primarily in setting, less in chronology or characters, and I found the separation oddly jarring. I also found the principle tension between two major characters very cringeworthy instead of productive and threatening, which didn't help.
But the strengths are manifold. Action spills around every corner! People are and are not who they say they will be! Space pirates! Elder technology and discoveries in physics! And, perhaps most importantly, Bear writes with real heart about people who are fundamentally good, and whose goodness is their lantern in their worlds. That, for me, is the deciding point in making this good series great.
Start with the first in the series and then enjoy your way through to this one - that's my recommendation!
Bear's characters and ideas are her strongest suit. Uniformly interesting, she gives readers character-driven science fiction that explores what seems like a mix of adventure, action, and heady conceptual thrills. And that's all great! However, I do feel like the first two White Space novels are more comprehensibly linked - this one was more of a struggle to relate to the other two as it is linked primarily in setting, less in chronology or characters, and I found the separation oddly jarring. I also found the principle tension between two major characters very cringeworthy instead of productive and threatening, which didn't help.
But the strengths are manifold. Action spills around every corner! People are and are not who they say they will be! Space pirates! Elder technology and discoveries in physics! And, perhaps most importantly, Bear writes with real heart about people who are fundamentally good, and whose goodness is their lantern in their worlds. That, for me, is the deciding point in making this good series great.
Start with the first in the series and then enjoy your way through to this one - that's my recommendation!
November 20, 2025
Apparently I didn't review either Ancestral Night or Machine? Oops.
Quick recap: very far future, galactic colonisation, (most) humans live alongside other species, they have 'right-minding' to deal with anti-social tendencies, and there's an ongoing search for the remnants of long-dead very powerful alien predecessors. Also, there's FTL travel, through White Space.
The three books in the White Space series are connected by being set in the same universe and dealing with some of the big issues, and events from previous books make the next books happen, but there's basically no character connections.
In this book, the archinformist (historian) Dr Sunya Song has left her family to go do research in one of the most exciting discoveries in centuries - an ancient AI left by that predecessor civilisation. Of course, things do not go at all as planned, starting with the very snarky AI ship she travels on, moving rapidly to a pirate attack, and then the arrival of her arch-nemesis. And there are the actual and attempted murders.
This is a space opera, with a whole lot of discussion about inter-species relationships on a personal and societal level, with both the continuation of racism and the desire to understand The Stranger playing significant roles. There's also some interesting crossover between this and Arrival / "Story of Your Life" in terms of how someone can come to understand a species whose entire way of looking at reality is utterly different from your own.
On a more mundane level, this is also a murder mystery, since Song gets involved in that side of things, when perhaps she shouldn't.
Overall this is a really fun story, with characters I enjoyed and a plot whose resolution I didn't entirely expect. However I must note that there were disappointments, particularly in some poor editing. For example on p414 of the trade paperback, and a few other times, questions are asked and then not answered in the conversation. Obviously this is sometimes deliberate, but there's no suggestion that's the case here - it just feels like a line is missing. There's also some repetition of information that feels like it's been doubled up because someone wasn't sure where it should go.
Will I read another book in this series? Of course I will.
Quick recap: very far future, galactic colonisation, (most) humans live alongside other species, they have 'right-minding' to deal with anti-social tendencies, and there's an ongoing search for the remnants of long-dead very powerful alien predecessors. Also, there's FTL travel, through White Space.
The three books in the White Space series are connected by being set in the same universe and dealing with some of the big issues, and events from previous books make the next books happen, but there's basically no character connections.
In this book, the archinformist (historian) Dr Sunya Song has left her family to go do research in one of the most exciting discoveries in centuries - an ancient AI left by that predecessor civilisation. Of course, things do not go at all as planned, starting with the very snarky AI ship she travels on, moving rapidly to a pirate attack, and then the arrival of her arch-nemesis. And there are the actual and attempted murders.
This is a space opera, with a whole lot of discussion about inter-species relationships on a personal and societal level, with both the continuation of racism and the desire to understand The Stranger playing significant roles. There's also some interesting crossover between this and Arrival / "Story of Your Life" in terms of how someone can come to understand a species whose entire way of looking at reality is utterly different from your own.
On a more mundane level, this is also a murder mystery, since Song gets involved in that side of things, when perhaps she shouldn't.
Overall this is a really fun story, with characters I enjoyed and a plot whose resolution I didn't entirely expect. However I must note that there were disappointments, particularly in some poor editing. For example on p414 of the trade paperback, and a few other times, questions are asked and then not answered in the conversation. Obviously this is sometimes deliberate, but there's no suggestion that's the case here - it just feels like a line is missing. There's also some repetition of information that feels like it's been doubled up because someone wasn't sure where it should go.
Will I read another book in this series? Of course I will.
July 23, 2025
I received this book as an eArc via NetGalley.
It has been a minute since I last read an Elizabeth Bear novel, simply because my TBR pile has become overwhelming over the last decade. I picked up this novel initially not realizing that it was third in a series (Machine and Ancestral Night are the other two titles). The good news is, I can confirm that even coming late to the party did not keep me from enjoying this novel.
Dr. Sunya Song is an archinformist (futuristic cross between an archivist and a historian with a side of space archaeology; her job is to both document and analyze history), headed to the edge of nowhere (space station named Town) to work with a dying alien artificial intelligence, the Baosong, to try to document its language and knowledge before it goes extinct because the star it is near is dying. This is a long and complex assignment, and Sun is looking forward to a bit of focused work and a bit of a break from parenting her two children, although she misses her wife Salvie.
Sunya Song is having a series of very bad days, even before she arrives at Town. The shipmind of her transport to Town really doesn’t like her. Her ex Vickie (also an archinformist) has beat her to Town, and happens to be on the same ship as Sun’s family, who have arrived to surprise her. While Sun is pleased to see her family, she is NOT happy to see Vickie, who was not only emotionally abusive but also stole Sun’s work and passed it off as her own.
Oh, and the star near the Baosong is sending out massive radiation and is going to collapse and kill everyone on the station of Town, humanoid and alien alike. And there are anti Artificial-Intelligence pirates trying to kill anyone trying to get to Town, leave Town, or generally existing while using AI in their vicinity. And also, Vickie’s assistant Trevor has been nearly murdered with brain-eating amoebas. And then there’s another murder.
It’s up to Sun to figure out how to save herself-and everyone else- from everything falling apart.
With tight pacing, pitched space battles, and thoughtful and engaging characters both human and non-human who are doing their best against impossible odds, it’s lovely to spend time in this universe.
Strongly recommended.
It has been a minute since I last read an Elizabeth Bear novel, simply because my TBR pile has become overwhelming over the last decade. I picked up this novel initially not realizing that it was third in a series (Machine and Ancestral Night are the other two titles). The good news is, I can confirm that even coming late to the party did not keep me from enjoying this novel.
Dr. Sunya Song is an archinformist (futuristic cross between an archivist and a historian with a side of space archaeology; her job is to both document and analyze history), headed to the edge of nowhere (space station named Town) to work with a dying alien artificial intelligence, the Baosong, to try to document its language and knowledge before it goes extinct because the star it is near is dying. This is a long and complex assignment, and Sun is looking forward to a bit of focused work and a bit of a break from parenting her two children, although she misses her wife Salvie.
Sunya Song is having a series of very bad days, even before she arrives at Town. The shipmind of her transport to Town really doesn’t like her. Her ex Vickie (also an archinformist) has beat her to Town, and happens to be on the same ship as Sun’s family, who have arrived to surprise her. While Sun is pleased to see her family, she is NOT happy to see Vickie, who was not only emotionally abusive but also stole Sun’s work and passed it off as her own.
Oh, and the star near the Baosong is sending out massive radiation and is going to collapse and kill everyone on the station of Town, humanoid and alien alike. And there are anti Artificial-Intelligence pirates trying to kill anyone trying to get to Town, leave Town, or generally existing while using AI in their vicinity. And also, Vickie’s assistant Trevor has been nearly murdered with brain-eating amoebas. And then there’s another murder.
It’s up to Sun to figure out how to save herself-and everyone else- from everything falling apart.
With tight pacing, pitched space battles, and thoughtful and engaging characters both human and non-human who are doing their best against impossible odds, it’s lovely to spend time in this universe.
Strongly recommended.
August 21, 2026
Overall, a decent sci-fi series!
Two complaints. One, although each book is a standalone with a different main character they feel too similar at times. They certainly do have distinct qualities and whatnot, but there are certain things in the background that every character always thinks about the same way that just feel a little weird.
Secondly, for such a big galactic civilization, the scale feels off at times. Things feel too small, or just don’t quite make sense.
I enjoyed each book, I loved the sense of discovery, and the take on what it would take for humans (and other aliens) to fit together in one civilization.
Two complaints. One, although each book is a standalone with a different main character they feel too similar at times. They certainly do have distinct qualities and whatnot, but there are certain things in the background that every character always thinks about the same way that just feel a little weird.
Secondly, for such a big galactic civilization, the scale feels off at times. Things feel too small, or just don’t quite make sense.
I enjoyed each book, I loved the sense of discovery, and the take on what it would take for humans (and other aliens) to fit together in one civilization.
Read
October 24, 20256.5 out of 10
Not quite as good as the first two White Space novels, a little too much family melodrama for my taste, but the Synarche remains the next best future history after the Culture.
Not quite as good as the first two White Space novels, a little too much family melodrama for my taste, but the Synarche remains the next best future history after the Culture.
April 24, 2026
Three and a half stars
I really like the setting of this series with its tech and societal structure and interestingly varied aliens. I enjoyed this particular installment with its mysteries and the attempts to communicate with the ancient baomind with all that brings and even the family and interpersonal drama. That said, looking back over it all, I think the different aspects get disproportionate times allocated to them, some of the internal anxieties and musings end up taking too much time, and the final heroics and resolution, though quite exciting, actually somewhat undermine some of the discussions around the importance of narrative which the book seems to be interested in.
All that being said, I had a good time reading this and will be glad to read any others in the series that get written.
I really like the setting of this series with its tech and societal structure and interestingly varied aliens. I enjoyed this particular installment with its mysteries and the attempts to communicate with the ancient baomind with all that brings and even the family and interpersonal drama. That said, looking back over it all, I think the different aspects get disproportionate times allocated to them, some of the internal anxieties and musings end up taking too much time, and the final heroics and resolution, though quite exciting, actually somewhat undermine some of the discussions around the importance of narrative which the book seems to be interested in.
All that being said, I had a good time reading this and will be glad to read any others in the series that get written.
November 13, 2025
I read about 20% of this 3rd iteration and honestly, it turned out to be such a boring disappointment that I have abandoned it. This is something I seldom do. It essentially turned into a litany of descriptions of Sun's irritation, bad temper and her obsession with cats to such an extent that the story, such as it was, faded into the background. A sad failure in my opinion and now, unfortunately, Elizabeth Bear is on my 'avoid' list.
March 15, 2026
Locus magazine long listed for the 2026 award season. I read this shortly after book one in the White Space universe, again, I enjoyed the setting and the story but the characters were much too focused on their own growth and internal monologue. This one focused on the travails of raising teenage kids, which, been there, done that (although not in space) and I was pretty much not interested.
I will probably try another Bear but if all her novels are so inside the head focused, maybe not.
I will probably try another Bear but if all her novels are so inside the head focused, maybe not.
December 15, 2025
I actually DNFed this about 30 pages from the end. This book is bad. The protagonist is so awful - for like the first half of the book I thought *surely* she was going to have some kind of revelation that her perceptions were distorted but nope! Turns out she's right about everything and everyone really is out to get her! Also her job makes no sense.
September 4, 2025
Sunya is a scientist, an archinformist, specializing in using data to put together the full story, whether it be how something works or the history of a species. When we meet her, she's traveling to the data storage left by the only (I think) known spacegoing predecessor civilization in the galaxy. The star that the Baomind is orbiting is dying, and the Synarche would like to rescue the Baomind, or as much of its data as possible, sooner than later.
The Synarche government and its multispecies civilization is the only thing this book has in common with the previous two books in this "series." There are just a few things that are covered in those books and not explained from scratch. One is the rightminding, where people can adjust their brain/body chemistry as needed or desired. Sunya sometimes adjusts her anger down, or in crisis situations, adjusts her metabolism so that she can work most efficiently.
Sunya is looking forward to doing her research alone, but as she reaches the area, so does another spaceship, carrying not only her professional/personal nemesis, but also Sunya's wife (who is not human) and their two (human) teenagers. Which would be disrupting enough, but then they are all set upon by - space pirates! When they finally all get to the settlement, there are two murder attempts, including one on Sunya. So she also takes on (with the local authorities) the task of solving those, while hoping there's not another, maybe successful, one.
Sunya gets to do some work, probably the best (but still preliminary) interactions with the Baomind and its tesserae (read the book) so far. Plus, she finds out a lot more about the shadowy shapes she's been seeing. Oh, meanwhile, her rebelling teenage daughter won't talk to her and is enamored of her nemesis.
Does that sound like a lot? It is. In her afterword, Bear says that while writing it, "...often I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew trying to meld a family drama with a first-contact novel and a space opera, with a smidgen of murder mystery thrown in for seasoning." I think she succeeded very well. The only think I disliked was the number of times they had to engage with the pirates; I'd have preferred at least one less encounter. The science, especially the quantum physics "observer effect," wasn't always to my liking; when the anthropic principle was first mentioned, a character called it solipsistic, which is my take. The way quantum physics worked in sending super-long-distance messages seemed very unlikely. But who knows? It's fictional science anyway.
I loved, as I did in the previous books, how humans are just one species of the many that make up the Synarche. The crews, both of the station where Sunya is working and of the ships that are trapped there by the pirate blockade, are accordingly multispecies, and she becomes fond of people of various species. Artificial intelligences, mostly ship minds, are also part of the team. Some of them are not happy about being created with a debt that they have to pay off (covered in the earlier books). There are some prejudices - Sunya is put off by a 6-body human (I think) group mind, and the ship she came on doesn't like humans much - but for the most part, everyone gets along. Except, of course, with the pirates.
There's another overarching theme of, what is a narrative; what is a story? I was reading more for the action and may have missed some of that content, but at one point, Bear says:
The Synarche government and its multispecies civilization is the only thing this book has in common with the previous two books in this "series." There are just a few things that are covered in those books and not explained from scratch. One is the rightminding, where people can adjust their brain/body chemistry as needed or desired. Sunya sometimes adjusts her anger down, or in crisis situations, adjusts her metabolism so that she can work most efficiently.
Sunya is looking forward to doing her research alone, but as she reaches the area, so does another spaceship, carrying not only her professional/personal nemesis, but also Sunya's wife (who is not human) and their two (human) teenagers. Which would be disrupting enough, but then they are all set upon by - space pirates! When they finally all get to the settlement, there are two murder attempts, including one on Sunya. So she also takes on (with the local authorities) the task of solving those, while hoping there's not another, maybe successful, one.
Sunya gets to do some work, probably the best (but still preliminary) interactions with the Baomind and its tesserae (read the book) so far. Plus, she finds out a lot more about the shadowy shapes she's been seeing. Oh, meanwhile, her rebelling teenage daughter won't talk to her and is enamored of her nemesis.
Does that sound like a lot? It is. In her afterword, Bear says that while writing it, "...often I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew trying to meld a family drama with a first-contact novel and a space opera, with a smidgen of murder mystery thrown in for seasoning." I think she succeeded very well. The only think I disliked was the number of times they had to engage with the pirates; I'd have preferred at least one less encounter. The science, especially the quantum physics "observer effect," wasn't always to my liking; when the anthropic principle was first mentioned, a character called it solipsistic, which is my take. The way quantum physics worked in sending super-long-distance messages seemed very unlikely. But who knows? It's fictional science anyway.
I loved, as I did in the previous books, how humans are just one species of the many that make up the Synarche. The crews, both of the station where Sunya is working and of the ships that are trapped there by the pirate blockade, are accordingly multispecies, and she becomes fond of people of various species. Artificial intelligences, mostly ship minds, are also part of the team. Some of them are not happy about being created with a debt that they have to pay off (covered in the earlier books). There are some prejudices - Sunya is put off by a 6-body human (I think) group mind, and the ship she came on doesn't like humans much - but for the most part, everyone gets along. Except, of course, with the pirates.
There's another overarching theme of, what is a narrative; what is a story? I was reading more for the action and may have missed some of that content, but at one point, Bear says:
People's lives are like histories. Personal histories, not like stories: They aren't neat. They are tangled and contradictory. They don't necessarily generate an arc.Life and storytelling...I love how she thinks.
We impose arcs upon them, because that's what human minds do. We cut edges where no edges previously existed. We press them into frames. We give them an end and a beginning. We draw hard lines all over the gradients that compose them, and we choose what to emphasize and what to deprecate. In doing so, we craft a narrative...
July 13, 2025
The Folded Sky is the third in Bear's White Space series of somewhat connected novels, taking place in the same setting but with different protagonists each time. It has some major flaws, but I liked it despite them. Here, our intrepid protagonist goes far away from the core worlds to research the Baomind, a precursor massive alien AI. When I first glanced at a description of the novel, I was expecting a cozy science fiction story where our researcher untangles the how and why of the Baomind, with a bit of action thrown in on the side.
Instead, what we get is less cozy and more of a blockade situation where sociopathic "pirates" try to destroy the research outpost due to their unhinged philosophy. Pirates in quotation marks because they aren't pirates and more of a non-unified political faction at odds with the galactic mainstream. Not that the novel or the series as a whole is interested in exploring their point of view, the overall setting is so utopian at times that it's hard to come up with convincing opposition and so the best Bear has done is throw some rather one-dimensional human throwback libertarian assholes in there that merely acts as goons to be disposed of.
Structurally, the novel also adds a murder mystery, a competitive researcher with whom our protagonist has a bad history, family drama (a rebellious daughter), and it all adds up to something entirely different than what I was expecting. Not in a bad way, though, just not quite what I thought I would be getting into.
The biggest reason I liked it is that our main protagonist is a mom who also has to deal with her wife (who is an alien) and her kids while trying to get some time for herself to work on the Baomind. Science fiction as a genre has far too few stories with mom's as their protagonists (honestly, I don't remember anything at the moment) and this felt so genuine in how it depicted her struggles managing her time, trying to do right by her partner, by her kids but also find time for herself, setting the right boundaries and dealing with various other issues.
Where it also shines is the continued exploration of the concept of right-minding, which for me is that standout idea of the white space series, and that elevates what could have easily been told in a mainstream novel (if you stripped out all the sci-fi bits) to something that could only work in genre. Here the focus is to show that while right-minding is a very useful tool that helped humanity and many other aliens to manage their worst impulses, it's not a panacea for all issues and his limits. But like other tools, it’s good for what it is.
And the exploration of a culture where right-minding is used by pretty much everyone, where people can easily allow others to look into their minds or not, how this shapes behavior and attitudes, sets this far above many other current space operas.
It's a bit messy, sometimes trying too much, and it feels like the narrative is pulled in many different directions. There's a bit where the author suddenly has a discourse on the anthropic principle, then brings in quantum entanglement as a plot point to solve one issue, and it felt like an author trying to unload her Wikipedia research. Still, for all its flaws, I had a grand time with the book, and I do hope Bear continues the series with many more books and many interesting protagonists.
Instead, what we get is less cozy and more of a blockade situation where sociopathic "pirates" try to destroy the research outpost due to their unhinged philosophy. Pirates in quotation marks because they aren't pirates and more of a non-unified political faction at odds with the galactic mainstream. Not that the novel or the series as a whole is interested in exploring their point of view, the overall setting is so utopian at times that it's hard to come up with convincing opposition and so the best Bear has done is throw some rather one-dimensional human throwback libertarian assholes in there that merely acts as goons to be disposed of.
Structurally, the novel also adds a murder mystery, a competitive researcher with whom our protagonist has a bad history, family drama (a rebellious daughter), and it all adds up to something entirely different than what I was expecting. Not in a bad way, though, just not quite what I thought I would be getting into.
The biggest reason I liked it is that our main protagonist is a mom who also has to deal with her wife (who is an alien) and her kids while trying to get some time for herself to work on the Baomind. Science fiction as a genre has far too few stories with mom's as their protagonists (honestly, I don't remember anything at the moment) and this felt so genuine in how it depicted her struggles managing her time, trying to do right by her partner, by her kids but also find time for herself, setting the right boundaries and dealing with various other issues.
Where it also shines is the continued exploration of the concept of right-minding, which for me is that standout idea of the white space series, and that elevates what could have easily been told in a mainstream novel (if you stripped out all the sci-fi bits) to something that could only work in genre. Here the focus is to show that while right-minding is a very useful tool that helped humanity and many other aliens to manage their worst impulses, it's not a panacea for all issues and his limits. But like other tools, it’s good for what it is.
And the exploration of a culture where right-minding is used by pretty much everyone, where people can easily allow others to look into their minds or not, how this shapes behavior and attitudes, sets this far above many other current space operas.
It's a bit messy, sometimes trying too much, and it feels like the narrative is pulled in many different directions. There's a bit where the author suddenly has a discourse on the anthropic principle, then brings in quantum entanglement as a plot point to solve one issue, and it felt like an author trying to unload her Wikipedia research. Still, for all its flaws, I had a grand time with the book, and I do hope Bear continues the series with many more books and many interesting protagonists.
June 26, 2026
Dr. Sunya Song decides to take a year-long job attempting to help construct a language for communicating with the Baomind, a giant distributed intelligence set up by a precursor civilization around a distant star which is now dying. Even though it means time away from her family, and living on a constructed space station (something that is a personal phobia for her) it's a good step for her career, and it means she might assist her civilization in its goal of relocating the Baomind to a new home, or better interpreting the archives of information that lay within. Unfortunately, the decision turns out provide one set of stressors after another, from the transport she must take run by an AI resentful of humans and seeming dismissive of her in particular, to the surprise discovery that her ex, who previously stole credit for her research, is on the station and possibly already badmouthing her, to her wife deciding to drag her kids along after her... the last might have been a sweet surprise, except for the fact that pirates have decided to blockade the system and they may have to hold our for months before somebody sends a rescue, and somebody aboard the station seems intent on murder. Is the fact that she's maybe starting to see things one more problem, or just a sign she's cracking under the pressure?
I really enjoyed the previous books in the setting (which are standalone), and moreover, it had become a frontrunner for one of my favorite ongoing settings in sci-fi, at least ones currently producing new content (taking up a void the Culture left behind). However... this one just didn't do it for me. The main SF idea the author was interested in exploring didn't really feel like a particularly exciting addition to a sci-fi setting (I was much more interested in the one I thought it'd be deep-diving into, the Baomind itself, which wasn't especially novel but could be explored well, but that, though a major element, suffered greatly from the split focus to the other thing that I don't entirely buy into at all), and the mystery and action elements suffered from too much repetition... I lost count of the times "sudden pirate attack!" happened, in one book, and granted, the setting established early on that they were under siege by a pirate fleet but... it still wore on me.
I liked the main character and the sometimes petty-seeming rivalry with her ex, who showed that despite the general focus on psychiatric well-being of the society, messed-up people still exist, as do insecurities and neuroses among characters you might consider protagonists, but again, it went on a bit too long and towards the end the enemy character started to drift towards the cartoony. And the family drama and friendships with various nonhuman characters was good, but felt underserved by all the elements I didn't care for.
I still love the setting and would be here for the next time the author produces a book in it, but every one in a while even a franchise you love can produce a miss, and this one was a miss for me. 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2. A fairly low score for me, and not even because I disliked anything in particular about it (except maybe that big-sci-fi-idea which left me totally cold) but just because the whole book left me a bit 'blah,' when I was hoping to be excited.
I really enjoyed the previous books in the setting (which are standalone), and moreover, it had become a frontrunner for one of my favorite ongoing settings in sci-fi, at least ones currently producing new content (taking up a void the Culture left behind). However... this one just didn't do it for me. The main SF idea the author was interested in exploring didn't really feel like a particularly exciting addition to a sci-fi setting (I was much more interested in the one I thought it'd be deep-diving into, the Baomind itself, which wasn't especially novel but could be explored well, but that, though a major element, suffered greatly from the split focus to the other thing that I don't entirely buy into at all), and the mystery and action elements suffered from too much repetition... I lost count of the times "sudden pirate attack!" happened, in one book, and granted, the setting established early on that they were under siege by a pirate fleet but... it still wore on me.
I liked the main character and the sometimes petty-seeming rivalry with her ex, who showed that despite the general focus on psychiatric well-being of the society, messed-up people still exist, as do insecurities and neuroses among characters you might consider protagonists, but again, it went on a bit too long and towards the end the enemy character started to drift towards the cartoony. And the family drama and friendships with various nonhuman characters was good, but felt underserved by all the elements I didn't care for.
I still love the setting and would be here for the next time the author produces a book in it, but every one in a while even a franchise you love can produce a miss, and this one was a miss for me. 2.5 stars, rounded down to 2. A fairly low score for me, and not even because I disliked anything in particular about it (except maybe that big-sci-fi-idea which left me totally cold) but just because the whole book left me a bit 'blah,' when I was hoping to be excited.
September 2, 2025
Really 3.5.
This is the third book in the White Space series. Note that the following thoughts assume you've read at least one of the previous books and are familiar with the general universe.
In this outing, human archinformist (a kind of historian) Sunya has taken advantage of a dream research opportunity to download as much data and information as she can from the Boamind before the nearby red giant star finally dies. The only problem is that she has to travel clear across the galaxy, leaving her alien wife and their teenage human children behind. It's likely that she will not see her family in person for a very long time.
Just as her ship is about to dock with the research station, it's attacked by pirates. These Freeporters are totally against all things AI and often engage in terrorist acts. When she finally makes it to the research station, Sunya has to contend with a couple of surprises. First, her research rival and very-ex-lover has beaten her to the site. Second, her wife and kids are there to greet her.
At the reception given to greet the researchers, a young man (human) falls victim to a murder attempt (it's unclear whether a stay in cryosuspension will save him). Thus the book is mix of mystery (who is the killer and who was the intended victim?), action (will the Freeporters destroy the research station?), and philosophy (what are the ramifications of AI?).
As with the earlier books in the series, the characters contend with a number of complex issues. First and foremost is the necessity of AI. Ship minds control space ships and research stations, making sure that all runs smoothly for the various species onboard and under their care. Humans use rightminding, which help regulate their out-of-control emotions and spiraling thoughts. The book also explores interspecies relationships of all sorts, from colleagues to lovers. Other topics involve family dynamics, selfless actions to save others, and the physics of space travel.
In general, I liked The Folded Sky: I enjoyed trying to work out the mystery, I got caught up in the action, and I was interested in Sunya's family. Though I found myself thinking about the pros and cons of AI, much of the deeper technological and philosophical questions went in one ear and out the other. Still, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.
Sarah Slimani was the narrator for this book. I thought she did a fine job distinguishing among the characters and conveying the action. I have no complaints.
Thanks to SimonAudio for the review copy.
This is the third book in the White Space series. Note that the following thoughts assume you've read at least one of the previous books and are familiar with the general universe.
In this outing, human archinformist (a kind of historian) Sunya has taken advantage of a dream research opportunity to download as much data and information as she can from the Boamind before the nearby red giant star finally dies. The only problem is that she has to travel clear across the galaxy, leaving her alien wife and their teenage human children behind. It's likely that she will not see her family in person for a very long time.
Just as her ship is about to dock with the research station, it's attacked by pirates. These Freeporters are totally against all things AI and often engage in terrorist acts. When she finally makes it to the research station, Sunya has to contend with a couple of surprises. First, her research rival and very-ex-lover has beaten her to the site. Second, her wife and kids are there to greet her.
At the reception given to greet the researchers, a young man (human) falls victim to a murder attempt (it's unclear whether a stay in cryosuspension will save him). Thus the book is mix of mystery (who is the killer and who was the intended victim?), action (will the Freeporters destroy the research station?), and philosophy (what are the ramifications of AI?).
As with the earlier books in the series, the characters contend with a number of complex issues. First and foremost is the necessity of AI. Ship minds control space ships and research stations, making sure that all runs smoothly for the various species onboard and under their care. Humans use rightminding, which help regulate their out-of-control emotions and spiraling thoughts. The book also explores interspecies relationships of all sorts, from colleagues to lovers. Other topics involve family dynamics, selfless actions to save others, and the physics of space travel.
In general, I liked The Folded Sky: I enjoyed trying to work out the mystery, I got caught up in the action, and I was interested in Sunya's family. Though I found myself thinking about the pros and cons of AI, much of the deeper technological and philosophical questions went in one ear and out the other. Still, I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.
Sarah Slimani was the narrator for this book. I thought she did a fine job distinguishing among the characters and conveying the action. I have no complaints.
Thanks to SimonAudio for the review copy.
October 19, 2025
I was so eager to read this, having enjoyed Ancestral Night and Machine so much. However... this one didn't quite delight me the same way. Originally, the idea of "right minding" (having conscious control over your emotional state, with the ability to "tune" (down) and "bump" (up) your reactions) seemed pretty powerful to me. As I've read more of these books, I'm starting to see it as an enormous crutch (and for all I know, maybe that is the author's point).
This book is set in the Synarche (or, well, right out on the edge of it), a multi-species and multi-culture-spanning federation of sentient beings. Protagonist Sunya Song aims to study the Baomind, an ancient alien artifact, and extract and preserve what knowledge she can as they race to transport it to a more stable environment (the star around which it orbits is about to go nova). Meanwhile, there's a murder mystery distracting everyone, a toxic ex-girlfriend, an alien wife, two teenagers, four cats, DARK MATTER, some wild spacewalking and hyperspace jumping, and a bunch of other chaos. I wished there could have been more focus on the first-contact language translation problem :)
Some quotes I enjoyed:
* "I hate it when people with terrible belief systems turn out to be reasonably intelligent. It upsets my sense of the natural order of the universe, which is to say: that everybody smart should agree with me."
* "When you interrogate the universe, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Our questions help reality define itself. The universe and the observers make each other. So we have to choose to look outside ourselves. To widen our view. It doesn’t require us to sacrifice our ambition, because that’s a bad story. But it requires us to bend our ambition to consider others."
* "Humans make a lot of terrible mistakes because we rely so heavily on narrative to understand the world. It allows our brains to be hacked by convincing fairy tales, to be hijacked by memes whether they have any objective reality or not. We probably needed rightminding more than most species just to remind us that stories are not the truth, even when they feel like the truth. Even when they suit all our biases and reinforce all our prejudices."
This book is set in the Synarche (or, well, right out on the edge of it), a multi-species and multi-culture-spanning federation of sentient beings. Protagonist Sunya Song aims to study the Baomind, an ancient alien artifact, and extract and preserve what knowledge she can as they race to transport it to a more stable environment (the star around which it orbits is about to go nova). Meanwhile, there's a murder mystery distracting everyone, a toxic ex-girlfriend, an alien wife, two teenagers, four cats, DARK MATTER, some wild spacewalking and hyperspace jumping, and a bunch of other chaos. I wished there could have been more focus on the first-contact language translation problem :)
Some quotes I enjoyed:
* "I hate it when people with terrible belief systems turn out to be reasonably intelligent. It upsets my sense of the natural order of the universe, which is to say: that everybody smart should agree with me."
* "When you interrogate the universe, the answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Our questions help reality define itself. The universe and the observers make each other. So we have to choose to look outside ourselves. To widen our view. It doesn’t require us to sacrifice our ambition, because that’s a bad story. But it requires us to bend our ambition to consider others."
* "Humans make a lot of terrible mistakes because we rely so heavily on narrative to understand the world. It allows our brains to be hacked by convincing fairy tales, to be hijacked by memes whether they have any objective reality or not. We probably needed rightminding more than most species just to remind us that stories are not the truth, even when they feel like the truth. Even when they suit all our biases and reinforce all our prejudices."
June 17, 2025
I read the ARC for The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear, White Space #3, following Ancestral Night and Machine. These are standalone stories that share world-building. So you can read in any order really.
In The Folded Sky we follow Dr. Sunyata Song who has left her wife and teen children behind with her wife to travel to a distant space station for a project that is to salvage her career. As they are approaching the space station another ship is blown up by pirates and pirates attempt to stop Sunyata’s ship as well, but they are able to escape. It is unknown if they will be able to leave as the pirates are running a blockade because they are fanatically anti-AI.
Complicating the story, Dr. Song learns that her ex and rival, Dr. Vickee DeVine will be arriving at the space station ahead of her and she feels that is disastrous for her project. DeVine is good at everything especially convincing everyone of how wonderful she is even though she has stolen other people’s work, include Sunyatas. Another surprise, Sunyata’s wife and children arrived on the same ship as Vickee to surprise her.
Okay, the world is fascinating and the pacing of the story is good, but here I found the characters to be the weakest part of the story. They were good – Sunyata is interesting and the concept of ‘right-minding’ is fascinating. Basically the fox imbedded in the brain is able to suppress the reactions/emotions that you show to others. Sunyata uses right-minding a lot. This would make for a fascinating dystopian novel if this was out of the control of the human and AI just determined the right-minding. Vickee, the ex and rival is pretty much a one note character. Salvie, Sunyata’s wife, is practically perfect and always sunny disposition – is such a person real? But, she seems to be as effective as right-minding in putting Sunyata back on track. Another interesting character is Salvie and Sunyata’s daughter Luna who seems to get the real character development.
Overall, I really liked the writing and the world building and I wished for better character development. I’ve given this book 3.75 stars rounded up to four. It is a good read. This book is released today, June 17th and I need to thank Net Galley and Saga Press for my advance reader copy. #SagaSaysCrew
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